Speaker 1: It's the Son of a Butch podcast. We come to
Speaker 1: you every Wednesday. This week's guest doctor Sasho McKenzie. He
Speaker 1: is doing some groundbreaking work in biomechanics. If you're a
Speaker 1: golf nerd and you're trying to hit the golf ball further,
Speaker 1: you're going to know who he is. You're going to
Speaker 1: know his name, and we're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: lot of really really cool stuff. He's someone that I
Speaker 1: think is doing roundbreaking work to try and help golfers
Speaker 1: get better. So very very excited for everyone to be
Speaker 1: able to listen to him talk. The work he's done
Speaker 1: with Matt Fitzpatrick to help him hit the golf ball
Speaker 1: further is some really really cool stuff. But before we
Speaker 1: dive in, I want to thank our partners at Rapsodo
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Speaker 1: And now let's get to the interview with Sasho McKenzie.
Speaker 1: My guest is doctor Sasho McKenzie. Sash I'm sure a
Speaker 1: passive cross, but I mean You're one of the names
Speaker 1: that in golf instruction in twenty twenty three we hear
Speaker 1: a lot. So I'm really really excited to get a
Speaker 1: chance to talk to you and kind of pick your
Speaker 1: brain because with all of the the doctor degrees and
Speaker 1: all of the biomechanics stuff you're you're a hell of
Speaker 1: a lot smarter than I am, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I'm not sure what I know an
Speaker 2: awful lot about very little, That's what I like to say.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's a lot to unpack. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about the work you've done with Matt Fitzpatrick
Speaker 1: and the stack system, biomechanics and all of that, your
Speaker 1: work with rap Sodo, the comb that you've helped them
Speaker 1: come up with. But sajhow in twenty twenty three in
Speaker 1: golf instruction and for all the golfers out there listening,
Speaker 1: I think it's a very interesting time in instruction and
Speaker 1: you're on the front lines of it as I am,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of people are. I mean,
Speaker 1: on the lessons that I give. I feel like a
Speaker 1: lot of people come in and they're hearing these buzzwords,
Speaker 1: they're hearing this stuff on social media, and they're trying.
Speaker 1: I see so many players that I'm the doctor and
Speaker 1: they've got the broken wrist, and they've got the cast
Speaker 1: on the wrist. And then you check the wrist and
Speaker 1: the wrist isn't broken. And they said, well, yeah, but
Speaker 1: somebody said, if your wrist is broken, you've got to
Speaker 1: put a cast on it. And you're like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: your wrist isn't broken. So and I think there's so
Speaker 1: many players and people trying to play that hear all
Speaker 1: of this information. So science versus sports, science versus art.
Speaker 1: How do we balance that and how do you view
Speaker 1: all of that?
Speaker 2: Right? Well, I think you know, there are two big,
Speaker 2: big areas in golf, speed and accuracy, you know, and
Speaker 2: I believe that science needs to dominate speed. So no
Speaker 2: one could ever really, in my opinion, maybe this is
Speaker 2: a bit arrogant, could ever say anything to me about
Speaker 2: the You know, there's very small wilmen for someone to
Speaker 2: talk about the art of speed. You know, it's it's
Speaker 2: hard physics. I know what the body can do to
Speaker 2: generate speed. It's just physics principles. And then you overlay
Speaker 2: some biomechanics concepts on that. Accuracy on the other hand
Speaker 2: there you even as a scientist, you're mostly forced to
Speaker 2: listen or you should be listening to the folks that
Speaker 2: have experienced You know that. That's I I think why
Speaker 2: golf instruction right now is so interesting and maybe you
Speaker 2: always will be because you're I say this a lot.
Speaker 2: I spend a lot of time looking for research that
Speaker 2: discusses the repeatability of a movement, not just in golf,
Speaker 2: but could be typing a keyboard, it could be throwing
Speaker 2: a dart. And to date, I'm not aware of any
Speaker 2: study that said this way of moving is more repeatable
Speaker 2: from a human perspective than this other way of moving.
Speaker 2: So that means that the instructor on the lesson t
Speaker 2: who's given two thousand lessons has you know, I should
Speaker 2: listen to them as a scientist. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: you know I'm going to likely try to trump them
Speaker 2: when it comes to maybe what's the best way to
Speaker 2: increase speed? But you know, there's a whole lot of
Speaker 2: middle ground in there. Those are my thoughts on the
Speaker 2: art and science of it.
Speaker 1: I saw a quote that you said that you think
Speaker 1: there is a natural tendency for people with regards to
Speaker 1: golf swings not only their own golf swings, but instructors
Speaker 1: as well for aesthetics that we look towards what looks really,
Speaker 1: really good. And it's something that you know, when people
Speaker 1: ask me what my favorite golf swings are, I get
Speaker 1: asked that question a lot. I always ask I always
Speaker 1: ask the question from an esthetics standpoint or from a
Speaker 1: function standpoint, because from and golf is not an aesthetics contest, right,
Speaker 1: It's not figure skating, it's not gymnastics, because if it was,
Speaker 1: people like Adam Scott and Nelly Korda, they'd win every
Speaker 1: week because they'd get nine eights and nine nines from
Speaker 1: the judges because the look of their golf swing is very,
Speaker 1: very beautiful. It's very classic, it's very unencumbered by a
Speaker 1: lot of idosyncrasies. But the kid that I'm drawing a
Speaker 1: blanket is his name that led the Open Championship. After
Speaker 1: the first day, I'm watching him hit balls like Tuesday,
Speaker 1: he's six eight, he's got two hundred, he's cruising at
Speaker 1: two hundred and you can see. And I was talking
Speaker 1: to Dave Phillips about it over breakfast one morning and
Speaker 1: he said, you know, the amazing thing is you can
Speaker 1: see that that golf swing is one hundred percent based
Speaker 1: on function. He grew up in South Africa, probably didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of access to a lot of modern
Speaker 1: club fitting like we do here in the States, where
Speaker 1: you can get club fit everywhere and there's tons of equipment.
Speaker 1: So if you look at the way he swings the
Speaker 1: golf club, it looked to me like it was functional.
Speaker 1: He probably played with golf clubs that were too short
Speaker 1: growing up. He's six eight, he had to try and
Speaker 1: get back down to the ball tons of knee drive.
Speaker 1: But what I think is really great social in today's age,
Speaker 1: we know enough through people like yourself, through technology that
Speaker 1: in the past we would somebody would change that. But
Speaker 1: now through all the tech, through launch monitor data, through
Speaker 1: biomechanics data, through three D you can you can quantify
Speaker 1: if he can repeat it and if it works. And
Speaker 1: I think we're seeing so many more golf swings like
Speaker 1: that that are functional and they're not necessarily aesthetically the best,
Speaker 1: but they work.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, you know what. I contacted by a lot
Speaker 2: of mini tour players to emphasize your point, and I
Speaker 2: initially know nothing about their statistics. That's the first question
Speaker 2: I want to know, is we'll send me what you know,
Speaker 2: send me some of your stats. Let's see your strokes
Speaker 2: gain and you know the four areas. Let's see, you know,
Speaker 2: a track man session where I can look at your variability.
Speaker 2: But I don't. They don't send me any of that stuff.
Speaker 2: They say, well, you know, what do you see in
Speaker 2: the swing? I have no idea, you know, you it
Speaker 2: could be again, all these golf swings are you know,
Speaker 2: to use your word functional enough. If you've got, you know,
Speaker 2: to play at the elite level, If you've got one
Speaker 2: hundred mile an hour clubhead speed with your seven iron
Speaker 2: and you can hit the ball a certain height in
Speaker 2: the air, there's a whole world of options for you
Speaker 2: to swing a golf club. You know. If you're swinging
Speaker 2: at at eighty six miles an hour, you know your
Speaker 2: driver club at speeds one oh four, Well then we
Speaker 2: definitely have to work on something, you know. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I just showing me the aesthetics of your swing. That
Speaker 2: means so little to me without some context. You know.
Speaker 2: If I also, if I know that you're struggling with
Speaker 2: a hook or a block or some particular systematic miss,
Speaker 2: then I might be able to associate that with what
Speaker 2: I'm seeing aesthetically. But yeah, it's crazy to me that
Speaker 2: you could even think about fixing a swing without knowing
Speaker 2: what the you know, the ball flight data is saying.
Speaker 1: My dad's youngest brother, my uncle Billy. You know, my
Speaker 1: dad when he was working with Tiger, and you know,
Speaker 1: everybody was trying to swing like Tiger, get the club
Speaker 1: in these beautiful positions, and Adam Scott, you know, did
Speaker 1: a great job at kind of mimicking and I did that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I taught a lot of players in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands to swing the club like Tiger and
Speaker 1: it worked right, Get the club wider and things like that.
Speaker 1: But I remember we were watching Tiger hit balls one
Speaker 1: day and my uncle Billy was there and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, the amazing thing is we're all trying to
Speaker 1: have people swing like Adam Scott and Tiger Woods. Nobody
Speaker 1: tries to get anybody to swing like Lee Trevino. Nobody
Speaker 1: tries to get anybody to swing like Hailer when some
Speaker 1: of these incredibly functional, somewhat idiosyncratic moves on what they did.
Speaker 1: You live in the biomechanics world, and I saw a
Speaker 1: quote that you said biomechanics and sports is about discovering
Speaker 1: ways to perform a skill that moves our body fast
Speaker 1: and accurately while preventing injury. Not everybody that's playing golf
Speaker 1: that is a average golfer, And I always throw everybody
Speaker 1: that isn't playing competitively on a regular basis as average golfers, right,
Speaker 1: I mean everybody. The majority of people that play our
Speaker 1: sport from a golf standpoint are regular everyday golfers. They're
Speaker 1: not elite competitors, they're not elite performers. So when the
Speaker 1: average fifteen to twenty handicapper listens to this podcast and
Speaker 1: we're talking about biomechanics, I think it sometimes freaks people
Speaker 1: out because one, they don't know what these terms are.
Speaker 1: They don't know what it means for you. What's the
Speaker 1: easiest way for everyone listening to have an understanding and
Speaker 1: have a better relationship with the term biomechanics. What does
Speaker 1: it mean to you and how can it help golfers?
Speaker 2: Well, biomechanics is essentially physics, but applied to bones and
Speaker 2: muscles specifically. Yeah, so, but you know, deals with the
Speaker 2: forces that cause motion, and with a golfer, the forces
Speaker 2: are originating from the muscles. Those muscles pull on bones
Speaker 2: to create movement. And then there's a whole bunch of principles,
Speaker 2: mechanical principles and physical laws, Newton's laws that we can
Speaker 2: apply to understand better ways to swing a golf club.
Speaker 1: I saw also in doing some you know, research for this,
Speaker 1: two terms that that that you've used, external validity and
Speaker 1: internal validity. What do those mean? And and and how
Speaker 1: can we apply them to our own gain?
Speaker 2: Sure? So I think they apply specifically to answering a question.
Speaker 2: You know. So if you want to know, okay, I
Speaker 2: would say, is anchoring a putter better for improving putting performance?
Speaker 2: There's a question, okay, you know, so we've got some
Speaker 2: biomechanics involved in that. If you anchor the putter, will
Speaker 2: you put better? So if you're going to answer that
Speaker 2: using science, you need to conduct an experiment. My philosophy
Speaker 2: is first to maximize internal validity, so that means that
Speaker 2: you're sure that whatever you discover in the experiment is
Speaker 2: due to how you manipulated the experiment. And you would
Speaker 2: manipulate the experiment by saying, let's have golfers putt normally
Speaker 2: conventional with a regular you know, thirty four inch putter,
Speaker 2: and then let's have them putt with a longer putter
Speaker 2: where they anchor to their chest, or maybe we're comparing
Speaker 2: a forearm lock putter, whatever it is. And if I
Speaker 2: find a difference in performance, then I know it's due
Speaker 2: to the differences in those putters. The short one versus
Speaker 2: the anchor or the non anchored versus.
Speaker 1: One one works better than the other.
Speaker 2: In the conditions for the experiment, I have very high internalbility,
Speaker 2: so there's no other possible explanation for why this was
Speaker 2: a difference. So things I would do, I would do
Speaker 2: it in a lap where we don't have inconsistent greens,
Speaker 2: we don't have people moving in the background, we don't
Speaker 2: have differences in temperature, and everything would be very balanced.
Speaker 2: You know, you'd hit one put with this putter, another
Speaker 2: put with this putter. You'd hit you know, eighteen with
Speaker 2: one putter, eighteen with another putter. Your next participant in
Speaker 2: it would be the reverse order where they would start with,
Speaker 2: you know, the anchored versus the standard. But that has
Speaker 2: low external validity. Someone would say, yeah, but they don't
Speaker 2: have to read their own putt. They're not they don't
Speaker 2: have the nerves of trying to sink a pot in
Speaker 2: you know, a major championship. So then you'd want to
Speaker 2: try and once you confirm that if everything's tight tight
Speaker 2: experiment high internability there is a difference, then you see
Speaker 2: if that difference is strong enough to exist in the
Speaker 2: real world, you want to maximize external validity. Those studies
Speaker 2: tend to be tougher to do, but you would try
Speaker 2: and say, Okay, I'm going to try to get twenty
Speaker 2: tour players to play half the season with an using
Speaker 2: anchor and then they switch and twenty other ones to
Speaker 2: do the reverse, and we track the results that would have.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a tough example to actually recreate, but
Speaker 2: that would have high external validity. Right, You'd be like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: in the real world, does this show up?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I think a lot of times golfers, and
Speaker 1: specifically golfers that are trying to compete, are practicing almost
Speaker 1: in a vacuum. Right. They're trying to practice in a
Speaker 1: very very controlled environment, thinking that Okay, if I practice
Speaker 1: enough in a very specific controlled environment, that is going
Speaker 1: to have some sort of effect on the outcome. But
Speaker 1: the problem is the game that we're playing from a
Speaker 1: golf standpoint is so random, it's so all over the place,
Speaker 1: and I think I see more people practicing, like you said,
Speaker 1: they're trying to get this internal validity to where if
Speaker 1: I repeat this movement pattern over and over and over
Speaker 1: and over again in a very controlled space to where
Speaker 1: the lies are flat, you know, the block practice versus
Speaker 1: random practice. I think most golfers tend to stay in
Speaker 1: block practice constantly, and the random practice is for them.
Speaker 1: The random practice is the playing of the game, not
Speaker 1: random practice. The random practice is okay, well, now I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I've worked on this for two weeks now. I mean, I, Sasha,
Speaker 1: I have so many players that come and take lessons,
Speaker 1: that are trying to compete on many tours and say, okay,
Speaker 1: so would you suggest what I take, you know, six
Speaker 1: months off. I'm like, no, you need to play next week.
Speaker 1: You have to play. You can't do this in a laboratory.
Speaker 1: You have to go play. So how how do you
Speaker 1: balance those two between the internal validities where you're trying
Speaker 1: to have a controlled environment, and then the external to
Speaker 1: where you're saying, okay, let me go see if any
Speaker 1: of this works. As you said, in the real world,
Speaker 1: the real world is going and playing golf, putting scores
Speaker 1: down on a scorecard, which has nothing to do with,
Speaker 1: as you said, aesthetics or the way things look or
Speaker 1: the way you've practiced. How can our listeners balance the
Speaker 1: two because I feel in the twenty five years that
Speaker 1: I've been, you know, giving lessons, I think most people
Speaker 1: stay in the lab and they just want to get
Speaker 1: back to the lab too, Right, if they play bad,
Speaker 1: they just said, just get me back to the range,
Speaker 1: Get me back to the range, get me back to
Speaker 1: the range.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think we have there's kind of
Speaker 2: two related concepts as the research concept of internal external validity,
Speaker 2: which is important to answer question. But then we've got practicing,
Speaker 2: like you mentioned block versus random like how much what
Speaker 2: I would say, contextual interference do you have? And and
Speaker 2: I think that the more elite you get at as skill,
Speaker 2: there's a concept called challenge point, which I'm you know,
Speaker 2: it's kind of a rough guide to how best to
Speaker 2: optimize your practice. It's held up pretty well, and the
Speaker 2: idea is that the better you get at a skill,
Speaker 2: the more you should be challenged, the more you can
Speaker 2: randomize that practice. So I was just in the backyard
Speaker 2: this evening with my ten year old daughter Sienna, kind
Speaker 2: of new to golf, and we're doing just pet practice
Speaker 2: and twenty yard pitch shots, you know, trying to make
Speaker 2: clean contacts. So I'm fluffing up. We got some nice
Speaker 2: grass in the backyard. I'm fluffing up every single one.
Speaker 2: You know, they're and in fact, if she'd go to
Speaker 2: hit it and it kind of settled down, I'd fluff
Speaker 2: it up because she's at the point where I she
Speaker 2: could make what's really what I consider to be nice technique.
Speaker 2: You know, watch golf better Tuson. I love this chipping stuff.
Speaker 2: So in pitching, great technique, bad line means it's going
Speaker 2: to be really tough for her to make good contact,
Speaker 2: and then she'll think, well, that was a bad swing,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't. It was just a really tough scenario.
Speaker 2: So I think beginning golfers the block practice, the easy
Speaker 2: condition set the challenge points, so you're succeeding enough where
Speaker 2: you're reinforcing the good stuff you're doing. But then you
Speaker 2: get closer to tour players, and I think tour players
Speaker 2: spend too much time in block. You know, I think
Speaker 2: do enough to build up some confidence, but just enough.
Speaker 2: You know, hey, you want to hit four or five
Speaker 2: footers in a row to make sure that your line
Speaker 2: is good and check yourself in the mirror and whatever.
Speaker 2: That's fine. You should be spending the majority of your time,
Speaker 2: Like if I was working with a tour player and
Speaker 2: they're pitching, you know, or practice, you should be just
Speaker 2: dropping those things, you know, throw them on the ground,
Speaker 2: whatever lie it ends up in. That's where you play
Speaker 2: out of you know, and maybe even seeking out harder
Speaker 2: lies and harder situations, you know. So I think that
Speaker 2: in general, the more elite you get, the more practice
Speaker 2: time should be spent kind of more random, more things
Speaker 2: that make it that make it challenging, you know. That's that.
Speaker 2: And if you have even an elite level, if you
Speaker 2: have someone struggling, you know, maybe someone's getting a little
Speaker 2: yippie with the chips, then hey, maybe spend a half
Speaker 2: an hour hitting your pitch shots off tees, right, nothing
Speaker 2: wrong with that. Or I got no problem with a
Speaker 2: five inch hole for putting, right, If if you're struggling
Speaker 2: with that and you need to build some confidence, hitting
Speaker 2: eight foot putts with a five inch hole is great.
Speaker 2: Whereas someone like Aaron Baddeley. He could probably spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time putting at a three inch hole right
Speaker 2: to be like, okay, let's make sure I'm really dialed
Speaker 2: in here, and then he's the added benefit moving to
Speaker 2: the course and the four and a quarter looks like
Speaker 2: the Grand Canyons.
Speaker 1: Obviously, you've got a lot of you know, accolades, you know,
Speaker 1: for the work you've done with Matt Fitzpatrick. The stack system,
Speaker 1: which I'm seeing so many players not only at the
Speaker 1: tour level using, but so many juniors and so many
Speaker 1: amateur golfers are coming in with that in their bag.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about how you met Matt and what
Speaker 1: the stack system is.
Speaker 2: Sure, so I met Matt through his coach, Mike Walker.
Speaker 2: So they came to the conclusion twenty eighteen that Matt
Speaker 2: needed more speed. He wanted to be one of the
Speaker 2: best players in the world. He wants to be the
Speaker 2: best player in the world. He wants to win majors.
Speaker 2: And funny enough, Claude, it was at the Masters, playing
Speaker 2: you know, against guys like DJ DJ in particular whole eleven.
Speaker 2: Matt's got a four iron in at Augusta, DJ's got
Speaker 2: an eight iron. Well, you can't You can't do that
Speaker 2: over four rounds and expect to beat some like DJ.
Speaker 2: Like DJ's just as good at putting short game. So
Speaker 2: in order to have any chance faster, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: you need you need, you need to get the speed up.
Speaker 2: So they they gave me a call up, you know,
Speaker 2: spend a few days with Matt. We worked on some
Speaker 2: mechanics stuff, but really the gains came all the games
Speaker 2: came from using the stack system. So it's it's basically
Speaker 2: a weighted club, so you can you can do overload
Speaker 2: and overspeed training with it. But the magic's in the app,
Speaker 2: so it sets up customized programming for you. It tells
Speaker 2: you exactly what way to load on rest timers pop up.
Speaker 2: It tracks your records so you know it's program is
Speaker 2: going to be different than someone else's program. And then
Speaker 2: when you finish a program, it reanalyzes all the data
Speaker 2: it's collected and it says, okay, this is the next
Speaker 2: program that's best for you. And it also dynamically changes
Speaker 2: during the program to figure out what your next workout
Speaker 2: should be. And we put a lot of effort into
Speaker 2: making the app very motivating and engaging. So I think
Speaker 2: that that was a real change in the industry. We
Speaker 2: have thirty thirty options that you commote on there. The
Speaker 2: app is fund to interact with it. It's super motivating
Speaker 2: and you know, we've got about twenty five thousand people
Speaker 2: using it now, over twelve million swings, and we've got
Speaker 2: a ton of data that's really just made the app
Speaker 2: even better. Just we're constantly re evaluating the programming and
Speaker 2: what it can do. For a guy like Fitzpatrick, he
Speaker 2: was you know, ball speed was mid one sixties and
Speaker 2: over the course of twenty twenty one at Pebble, he
Speaker 2: went from mid one sixties to averaging one hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty one at the Tour Championship. That was his average
Speaker 2: driver speed for all drivers for that tournament. So you know,
Speaker 2: that's just absolutely game changing. It was the reason why
Speaker 2: he went, you know, the tipping point for why he
Speaker 2: won the US Open. He was there was a par
Speaker 2: four drivable par four on the Sunday last year. He
Speaker 2: was the only player to drive the green. You know,
Speaker 2: when eighty one ball speed, it was kind of cold
Speaker 2: and windy, Rory didn't drive the green. You know that
Speaker 2: all those long hitters. He was the guy that put
Speaker 2: the ball in the green, So it was it was
Speaker 2: really a tipping point for him to bring his career
Speaker 2: to the next level.
Speaker 1: What was the catalyst for you coming up with the
Speaker 1: stack system to begin with? I mean, where talk me
Speaker 1: through the thought process of Okay, obviously you do a
Speaker 1: ton of research. You're you're not throwing darts at a
Speaker 1: board and hoping that you hit the target. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's your your guess. I'm guessing. But with your background,
Speaker 1: did these aren't you know, uneducated guesses? You're like, okay,
Speaker 1: here's here's the information. So how did you go about
Speaker 1: coming up with a way to attack gaining speed?
Speaker 2: Sure, so I've got what I call a deterministic model
Speaker 2: my mind. You know, things that you can do. Here's
Speaker 2: Claude Harmon, what can we do to increase his club
Speaker 2: at speed. We've got mechanics, We've got physical training, We've
Speaker 2: got you know, maybe just actually your effort level. You know,
Speaker 2: there's there's certain things that we can do, knobs that
Speaker 2: we can move to increase your your clubhead speed and
Speaker 2: physical training is a big knob and overload overspeed is
Speaker 2: the biggest way to crank that knob, you know, So
Speaker 2: you can get stronger in the gym, you get more flexible,
Speaker 2: But the most efficient way to get faster is overload
Speaker 2: and overspeed. And I took a fundamentally different approach from
Speaker 2: what was currently out there, coming from my track and
Speaker 2: field background. Tracking field is very scientific, and I was
Speaker 2: a multi event athlete university meeting in track and field,
Speaker 2: and we would do overload and overspeed training. If I
Speaker 2: was running one hundred and eleven seconds hundred meters eleven
Speaker 2: seconds and my training partner was running a hundred meters
Speaker 2: in eleven seconds, but he was forty pounds heavier, we
Speaker 2: would have very different sled weights that we would toe,
Speaker 2: even though we were trying to run at a certain
Speaker 2: the same kind of percentage, change in our speed or
Speaker 2: the tension in a bungee cord that was pulling us
Speaker 2: would be different. So when I approached overload and overspeed,
Speaker 2: I said the same thing. It wasn't you and I
Speaker 2: are going to swing the same weight. We need to
Speaker 2: swing a weight that's going to have a swing at
Speaker 2: a certain percentage of our driver speed. So that's how
Speaker 2: I approached the research and iteratively went through experiment after
Speaker 2: experiment over years, saying, Okay, what weight's too heavy? What
Speaker 2: weight you know, if we have you swinging at only
Speaker 2: eighty five percent of your clubhead speeds, we got a
Speaker 2: lot of weight on there. Do we still see gains?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: So we fine tune and to figure okay, well, what
Speaker 2: percentage of your speed is too slow to see gains?
Speaker 2: What about at the other end, what percentage of speed
Speaker 2: is too fast? Before we stop seeing improvements in clubhead speed?
Speaker 2: Should you mix overload and overspeed in the same program?
Speaker 2: Maybe she should do three months of overload and then
Speaker 2: three months of overspeed. Should you do them in the
Speaker 2: same session? So we iteratively started ticking these off. How
Speaker 2: do I know if clubs programs should have more overload
Speaker 2: in it or should it have more overspeed in it? Right?
Speaker 2: So the research started getting more fine tuned to eventually
Speaker 2: the point where I started applying it to tour players.
Speaker 2: So Potterrick Harrington was one of the first people to
Speaker 2: do it. I met with him at TPI twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: and at that time I was using lead tape on
Speaker 2: the end of a driver shaft, you know, and maybe
Speaker 2: wasn't the safest thing. And then started working with that
Speaker 2: much of you know, Kevin Duffy used to work with
Speaker 2: Tommy Fleetwood, longtime trainer of Loui us Days and Lee Westwood.
Speaker 2: So he started using with his players. He started seeing results.
Speaker 2: G Mac was another person I thought, you know what, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is ready to develop into a system. And I
Speaker 2: have some very good relationship with folks at Ping and
Speaker 2: Marty Jertsen, who's who's awesome. He was kind of the
Speaker 2: final you know, link in the chain. Well even more
Speaker 2: so than that. It wouldn't have happened without him. But
Speaker 2: he did some of this overload over speed stuff and
Speaker 2: he went from one to twelve to mid one twenties
Speaker 2: and ended up making the cut at beth Page Black
Speaker 2: when the PGA champions there when Brooks, when Brooks won
Speaker 2: of it. Yeah, so this, you know, this is an
Speaker 2: engineer at Ping who's now an elite driver of the
Speaker 2: golf ball in terms of speed at the PGA Tour level.
Speaker 2: So he's like, hey, this really works, and he said, well,
Speaker 2: you know what do you what do you need? What
Speaker 2: do you need these design specs to be? So he
Speaker 2: designed it and yeah, we've we've got this great product
Speaker 2: and we brought in an awesome app person, the guy
Speaker 2: that you know did a lot of the track Man
Speaker 2: app so, yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 1: I saw a quote that you said, the problem with
Speaker 1: the U s g A and the r in A
Speaker 1: with the distance issue is they can't legislate around the athlete.
Speaker 1: And I saw Martin Slumbers at the at the Masters
Speaker 1: this year. He was talking to my dad. My dad
Speaker 1: was asking about the ball roll back and everything, and
Speaker 1: I mean, you said that you can't have speed without science,
Speaker 1: it's not art. But what I don't really think people
Speaker 1: realize is hitting the golf ball far. There is a
Speaker 1: skill to that, and the skill comes from understanding how
Speaker 1: you do that right. And I've always said, so I'll
Speaker 1: show that. I think it's I think it's incredibly naive
Speaker 1: from the governing body standpoint. Everybody says the golf ball
Speaker 1: goes too far, the golf ball goes too far, the
Speaker 1: driver goes too far, the driver goes too far. I
Speaker 1: was with Dustin Johnson h watching him hit balls today.
Speaker 1: If it was to me, if it was the technology
Speaker 1: and the technology alone, and I've been saying this for
Speaker 1: a while, then I should be able to pick up
Speaker 1: DJ's driver that he was driving with today, with the
Speaker 1: shaft that he uses with the ball that he uses
Speaker 1: and carry it three point fifteen three twenty in the
Speaker 1: air like he can't. And if I pick up his driver,
Speaker 1: I'm going to carry it two fifteen two twenty in
Speaker 1: the air because one, I don't have the body that
Speaker 1: he's blessed with. But also I just think if it
Speaker 1: was technology, if it was just the balls and the drivers,
Speaker 1: then everybody would hit the golf ball the same distance.
Speaker 1: Matt Fitzpatrick would have never had to go down the
Speaker 1: stack system because he should be able to pick up
Speaker 1: the same ball, the same driver that Rory's using and say, okay,
Speaker 1: I can get all the same equipment, and if it
Speaker 1: was just the equipment, it should go the same distance.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, there's a whole host of issues with the
Speaker 2: way the USCA and the RNA approached the concept. Is
Speaker 2: it even a problem? That's I think fundamentally, what are
Speaker 2: we fixing? So what I think they should have done
Speaker 2: to start out was said, let's get specific, show me
Speaker 2: some golf courses, and show me some holes on golf
Speaker 2: courses where the ball is going too far, and then
Speaker 2: you decide, okay, this is a problem. Now what do
Speaker 2: we do to address that? Because the vast majority of
Speaker 2: golfers on the vast majority of courses there clearly isn't
Speaker 2: an issue because the USGA is also pushing at the
Speaker 2: same time to get forward right right, So there's a
Speaker 2: there's a fundamental issue there. And and then once you
Speaker 2: decide on okay, let's take Saint Andrews, right, I think
Speaker 2: that would have to be the flag I would assume
Speaker 2: the flagship. Here's the course where the there's a big problem.
Speaker 2: You know, well, I don't know the last few times
Speaker 2: it's been at San Andrews. I thought we had great tournaments, right,
Speaker 2: Like if you if you look at Cam Smith's win,
Speaker 2: We've got Rory hunting him down. We've got Cameron Young
Speaker 2: hunting him down. It was very exciting in my opinion.
Speaker 2: Maybe some people thought that the scores were too low. Well,
Speaker 2: the weather was really very mundane.
Speaker 1: Golf is in it's an outdoor sport. So if you
Speaker 1: give the best players the best condition with not a
Speaker 1: lot of wind and not a lot of rain, they're
Speaker 1: going to shoot low scores. And then you look at
Speaker 1: what happened at the Senior Open Championship over the weekend
Speaker 1: where you have these catastrophic wind conditions and plus five
Speaker 1: plays off so and they've still got the same equipment
Speaker 1: that the USGA and the RNA says goes too far.
Speaker 1: They say the ball goes too far and the driver
Speaker 1: goes too far. And guys are you know, nine over
Speaker 1: and they're in the top five.
Speaker 2: Yes. So my fundamental issue, and I think I could
Speaker 2: you know, do a good job of proving this point,
Speaker 2: is that in the USG had a hard time understanding
Speaker 2: this when I tried to make the point is that
Speaker 2: the limiting factor is is not club head speed and
Speaker 2: ball speed factor is how far the ball is going
Speaker 2: and so, and I tried to make this point in
Speaker 2: a few ways. If you look at the average clubhead
Speaker 2: speed on tour one hundred and fifteen miles per hour,
Speaker 2: and even look at some of the faster guys swinging
Speaker 2: in the you know, low to mid twenties, there's a
Speaker 2: dozen guys at my course in Anigonish, Nova, Scotia that
Speaker 2: easily have tour level clubhead speed, right and there are
Speaker 2: thousands and thousands of them everywhere. But you never see
Speaker 2: that in other professional sports. No one has the physical skills.
Speaker 2: If you just go randomly to your local softball diamond
Speaker 2: or you know, a slow pitcher. No one is throwing
Speaker 2: ninety five mile an hour pitches. It's just not happening, right,
Speaker 2: They're throwing eighty seventy five. So where I'm going with
Speaker 2: this is that at the that we're really not meeting
Speaker 2: the potential currently at the elite level in golf because
Speaker 2: of how far the golf ball currently goes. It means
Speaker 2: that hitting it four hundred yards is not going to
Speaker 2: be optimal given the dispersion that's going to be associated
Speaker 2: with that. So if you said, okay, Rory DJ Matt Fitzpatrick,
Speaker 2: Tony Finnew will probably be the best example, and you go, okay,
Speaker 2: here's a ball that if with your current swing speed
Speaker 2: you're going to lose twenty yards overnight. Tony Finnew is
Speaker 2: going to go from swing at one eighteen to one
Speaker 2: twenty four and he's going to carry that ball exactly
Speaker 2: where he's carrying it now. Rory's going to do the
Speaker 2: same thing. Brian Harmon probably can't, right. But eventually then
Speaker 2: the guy's coming the gord sergeants, the guy's coming up
Speaker 2: through NCAA. That's who's going to be in there now.
Speaker 2: Because they're just waiting, they just hope that the average
Speaker 2: club at speed can move up to one twenty five.
Speaker 2: It can't right now because of the distance the golf
Speaker 2: ball does go at those speeds and the dispersion associated
Speaker 2: with that. Right. So, so the PGA the USGA was
Speaker 2: doing this research and making these assumptions based on the
Speaker 2: current technology, not realizing that, yeah, well, what happens if
Speaker 2: if we if we actually are now playing with this ball,
Speaker 2: we'll club head speeds to stay the same. No, they'll
Speaker 2: increase overnight. It'll be there'll be big jumps because guys
Speaker 2: have that potential, and.
Speaker 1: In order to get a different golf ball that doesn't
Speaker 1: go as far, they're going to try and hit it
Speaker 1: further to get it to go further.
Speaker 2: Right, all of a sudden, it's still optimal from a
Speaker 2: dispersion and distance perspective on the way courses are set
Speaker 2: up to probably be around for most courses where the
Speaker 2: average distance is right now, right, it may maybe a
Speaker 2: little bit further, but you know, you you won't see
Speaker 2: if you made a super hot golf ball right and
Speaker 2: a crazy hot driver and you said all right, let's
Speaker 2: go play Harbortown, you wouldn't You wouldn't see driving distance
Speaker 2: go up and that there's a reason why guys still
Speaker 2: pull threewood. You know on eighteen you're not going to
Speaker 2: see driving distance increase one yard.
Speaker 1: No. And the other thing is that I think that
Speaker 1: some of the governing bodies, I think they're in my opinion,
Speaker 1: they're very out of touch with modern athletes, right because
Speaker 1: they're not modern athletes, right, they're country club players. They
Speaker 1: played the golfer, So I don't think they understand how
Speaker 1: elite modern golfers that play golf for a living, how
Speaker 1: good they really are. And again that goes back to
Speaker 1: my point because if it was just the technology, everybody
Speaker 1: would hit and if it was just I mean, like
Speaker 1: you said, Gordon Sergeant, the kid that was leading. There
Speaker 1: are players that are playing that have over one twenty,
Speaker 1: but they're not winning every single tournament. And Brian Harmon
Speaker 1: still won a major two weeks ago, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: have one hundred and twenty ball speed. He doesn't, I
Speaker 1: mean or one eighty five ball speed in one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty mile per hoor clubhead speed. He doesn't come
Speaker 1: close to that. So do you think that there's a
Speaker 1: push because the governing bodies are worried about golf courses.
Speaker 1: Are they worried about the sport. I mean, they always
Speaker 1: say it's becoming too easy, But I'm on two or
Speaker 1: thirty weeks a year. The sport doesn't look any easier
Speaker 1: to me today than it looked twenty five years ago.
Speaker 2: No, And that's what I think. One of the reasons
Speaker 2: why the PGA Tour was like, yeah, we're not going
Speaker 2: to accept this is because people want to see better.
Speaker 2: They want to see records. No one, you know, wants
Speaker 2: to see players that can't play as you know as
Speaker 2: well as somebody did ten years ago. No one wants
Speaker 2: to see the basketball neck up to eleven feet, not
Speaker 2: see any dunks. You know, I would be that wouldn't
Speaker 2: be entertaining. And at the same time, one of their
Speaker 2: big their biggest mandate, I think is grow the game.
Speaker 2: And if you make it harder, that's not going to
Speaker 2: grow the game. There's a reason why pickleball, you know,
Speaker 2: I've said this a few times is taking off because
Speaker 2: tennis is quite hard relative to pickleball. Pickleball has found
Speaker 2: the sweet spot where it's like, hey, we can have rallies.
Speaker 2: You know, I can pick up this game. Figured it
Speaker 2: out in a couple of days and I can have
Speaker 2: some rallies and have some fun. Tennis is pretty hard,
Speaker 2: you know. Now, Is pickleball going to replace tennis at
Speaker 2: the league level, No, probably not. But if you're trying
Speaker 2: to get more people to play golf, don't make it harder.
Speaker 2: You know, on the home course that I play in
Speaker 2: any Innish, there's a bunker that's too ten to carry,
Speaker 2: and probably fifteen percent of our membership can carry it.
Speaker 2: You know, no one, no one needs hit the ball shorter,
Speaker 2: and there's no way. That's another flaw with having the
Speaker 2: change and the model local rule MOTI local rule is
Speaker 2: it would eventually trickle down to everybody. You know, there's
Speaker 2: there's no way for that not to happen. Tour players
Speaker 2: play the ball wn the NC double players are going
Speaker 2: to play it. If they're playing it at the you know,
Speaker 2: the US Amateur, then the guys are gonna want to
Speaker 2: play it before they go to the US Amateur, which
Speaker 2: means it's going to be in club championships, which means
Speaker 2: if it's in NC DOUBLEA, then the kids in high
Speaker 2: school have to play it, and then then their local
Speaker 2: junior tours are gonna have to play it. It's just
Speaker 2: there's no way it stays just at the elite level.
Speaker 1: And I listened to, you know, the governing bodies talk
Speaker 1: about how easy the game is. But when I'm not
Speaker 1: on the road at tour events, I give lessons eight
Speaker 1: hours a day. I still give lessons to regular handicapped golfers.
Speaker 1: I don't see any of these people not coming and
Speaker 1: taking lessons because the game's just so easy, now, right,
Speaker 1: I still you know, I've been teaching golf most of
Speaker 1: my adult life. I still see the average golfer struggle
Speaker 1: to get a three wood in the air. I still
Speaker 1: see the average golfer struggle to take a divot with
Speaker 1: anything past day nine iron. I still see the average
Speaker 1: golfer struggle with contact getting the golf ball airborne. Using
Speaker 1: your tennis and pickleball analogy, I see a lot of
Speaker 1: golfers that struggle to get from a tennis standpoint, they
Speaker 1: struggle to get the ball over the net consistently. You know,
Speaker 1: Novak Djokovic, there's a term in tennis called unforced errors.
Speaker 1: If he has a lot of unforced errors, he can't
Speaker 1: out winner the unforced errors, right, no matter how great
Speaker 1: he is. And I still see the average golfer, the
Speaker 1: regular everyday golfer having an enormous amount of unforced errors.
Speaker 1: And there's I think this perception from the governing bodies
Speaker 1: that the game is just so so easy and show
Speaker 1: at the elite level, DJ's irons are unhittable. Wait, he's
Speaker 1: got the smallest. The best players use the hardest equipment
Speaker 1: to hit. They're not using the equipment that's going to
Speaker 1: help them hit at forty yards further with their irons. Right,
Speaker 1: most of the guys that are elite elite ball strikers
Speaker 1: on the PGA tour are using equipment that is you know,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult for regular people to hit these clubs
Speaker 1: because the sweet space, the sweet spot is small. The
Speaker 1: size of the clubs are small. I mean, Ricky Fowler
Speaker 1: came out with said irons two years ago and they
Speaker 1: I mean they look like thimbles. They were so hard
Speaker 1: to hit. Yeah, I mean, my I've got a set
Speaker 1: of my grandfather's irons that he played with in the
Speaker 1: forties and you know, the lofts on these versus the
Speaker 1: loss on them today are very very different. Where do
Speaker 1: you see do you where do you see distance in
Speaker 1: ten years, five years, ten years? I mean, do you
Speaker 1: think it continues, Because I've talked to Dave Phillips about this,
Speaker 1: and he's been on the pod before, and he said
Speaker 1: he thinks there's a rate of diminishing return with clubhead
Speaker 1: speed and ball speed at the elite level. To whereas
Speaker 1: you said, the car is just too fast to keep
Speaker 1: on the road for the track that they want you
Speaker 1: to drive it on. It's yeah, it could go three
Speaker 1: it's a drag racer, but it has no ability to
Speaker 1: have maneuverability and you can't keep it on the track.
Speaker 1: Do you see speed gains continue to go up? And
Speaker 1: do you see that we're going to get to a
Speaker 1: plateau to where you're saying, Okay, if you go any
Speaker 1: higher in speed, clubhead speed, and ball speed, it becomes
Speaker 1: very difficult to compete and play the sport the way
Speaker 1: the sport is designed to be played.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the limiting factor right now why club head
Speaker 2: speed isn't higher is not because the players can't swing faster.
Speaker 2: It's because of what happens at the distance is associated
Speaker 2: with those clubhead speeds. The dispersion gets too large. So
Speaker 2: I I mean, I would tackle this if it is
Speaker 2: a problem through course design and there's clues all over
Speaker 2: the place. You just have to if you just did
Speaker 2: a search through shot link and you'd say, hey, where
Speaker 2: are some long par fours where the yard where the
Speaker 2: distance off the tee is below average? Right? Okay, we
Speaker 2: got a four hundred and sixty yard part four, you know,
Speaker 2: a little longer than average. Why is everybody in this
Speaker 2: been short? Let's go see how this hole is designed,
Speaker 2: you know, like things things like that, and depending on
Speaker 2: the whole. I'm no golf course architect guru, but depending
Speaker 2: on the whole, you have options to to to make.
Speaker 2: If you're gonna hit it far, you have to be
Speaker 2: super skilled. I would you should never be thinking of
Speaker 2: this from a we want to prevent anybody from trying
Speaker 2: to hit the ball far, like don't don't put like
Speaker 2: you know at three hundred yards creaks you know that
Speaker 2: are forty yards wide across the fairway. No, that that's
Speaker 2: not the way to do it. I think if somebody
Speaker 2: can go out there and shoot fifty four and hit
Speaker 2: the ball three hundred and forty yards on a rope
Speaker 2: every time, that's awesome. That that good for them. That's
Speaker 2: what I want to see in golf. That is the
Speaker 2: ultimate performance. So what you can do you know some
Speaker 2: of the lines that Bryson started taking. Right. If you
Speaker 2: don't want Bryson to go across six at six at BAYHILLI,
Speaker 2: you know, you do something real easy doesn't ruin the
Speaker 2: hole at all. You just plant a twenty foot pine
Speaker 2: tree that's not even in view. It's just off to
Speaker 2: the left right, just so that it's right. If you're like, hey,
Speaker 2: I want people to go down this chute, no problem,
Speaker 2: twenty foot pine tree. It's not near the t box.
Speaker 2: But in order for you to get a driver up
Speaker 2: twenty feet over the course of twenty yards, good luck. Right,
Speaker 2: But it doesn't ruin the aesthetics of the hole. There's
Speaker 2: lots of holes like that at you know, Augusta right
Speaker 2: where you're forced to go down a chute or hey, hey,
Speaker 2: if you're playing like a link style and the you know,
Speaker 2: there's plenty of awesome links holes examples of this where
Speaker 2: you don't want to have random pine trees. You fire
Speaker 2: some gorse bushes, you know between two ninety and three
Speaker 2: forty and a couple of pop bunkers. Hey, you want
Speaker 2: to take the risk of going driver and if you
Speaker 2: can put it down the fairway and avoid the gorse
Speaker 2: and the bunkers. Good for you, but and you should
Speaker 2: be rewarded for that skill. So I think there's there's
Speaker 2: more intelligent ways to do it than if you perceive
Speaker 2: there to be a problem than by just trying to
Speaker 2: slow the ball down, which I don't think will solve
Speaker 2: the problem at all. You would have to slow it
Speaker 2: down a ridiculous amount. Not twenty yards, you'd have to
Speaker 2: slow it down like fifty yards, and then you would
Speaker 2: never see Brian Harmon, a guy like Brian Harmon when
Speaker 2: the Open. You would basically say you can only play
Speaker 2: this sport if you've got one thirty club at speed,
Speaker 2: and there will be enough of those guys can who
Speaker 2: can play golf with one thirty clubhead speed and hit
Speaker 2: the ball three hundred yards with one hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: mile hour clubs. That's the way it would eventually go,
Speaker 2: which is not there they you know, USG and rn
Speaker 2: A certainly doesn't want that to happen.
Speaker 1: I don't think we talked about practice. You partnered with
Speaker 1: Rapsoda with their new Launch monitor come up with their
Speaker 1: version of the Combine twenty four shots. You know, talk
Speaker 1: me through when you when a company says to you, Okay,
Speaker 1: we want you to come up with this. Do you
Speaker 1: approach it in the same way that we've talked about
Speaker 1: from the speed standpoint? How did you come up with
Speaker 1: what was what you felt was going to be really
Speaker 1: advantageous for players to work on? From a combined standpoint?
Speaker 1: I mean, there's other launch monitors out there that have
Speaker 1: their version, but how did you come up with your
Speaker 1: idea on Okay, how can we challenge people in a
Speaker 1: combine environment with a launch monitor to help them perform
Speaker 1: and get the most out of their practice and the
Speaker 1: most out of their game.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I was really excited to do this because
Speaker 2: I have the ways that I think are best to practice,
Speaker 2: and I like practice too. There was a lot of
Speaker 2: constraints in that I want practice to also be insightful
Speaker 2: from an analytics standpoint, So not only are you maximizing
Speaker 2: your improvement, but then the results you get you can
Speaker 2: learn a lot about your game, and I want it
Speaker 2: to be You know, if you look at the market
Speaker 2: that Rep. Soto is targeting, there's going to be some
Speaker 2: elite golfers, but the majority of them like, who's gonna
Speaker 2: and they've got this the MLM two Pro has got
Speaker 2: an awesome price point, so anybody who's serious about their game,
Speaker 2: you know, on a budget, can go out and get
Speaker 2: it and they can use it at their rings. That's
Speaker 2: what I was thinking about. Okay, if you go to
Speaker 2: the the people grinding it out at all the ranges
Speaker 2: across you know, the United States, North Meyrioa, all over
Speaker 2: the place that you go go get a typical bag
Speaker 2: of balls. There's forty balls in there, okay, and you
Speaker 2: probably got forty minutes max. So you do some warm up,
Speaker 2: so I wanted the combine to be thirty shots. There's
Speaker 2: six balls of warm up right to get the cobwebs out,
Speaker 2: and then you've got three targets. Two of them are
Speaker 2: iron targets, so you can, you know, set the distance
Speaker 2: somewhere between fifty yards and whatever your furthest iron goes.
Speaker 2: You pick two targets, and then you always have a
Speaker 2: driving target, so it's a very well rounded experience. You
Speaker 2: hit two shots, you're hit in blocks of two, so
Speaker 2: you go two shots to the short target first, right,
Speaker 2: because you could go completely random and go one one, one,
Speaker 2: but you don't want to be switching clubs all the time.
Speaker 2: That's annoying, and everybody wants, at least, especially in practice,
Speaker 2: can I get just let me hit one more, Let
Speaker 2: me hit one right, I got hit one more. So
Speaker 2: you hit them blocks of two. But then you go
Speaker 2: through four rounds. You get eight shots at each at
Speaker 2: each target, and that's really critical. Some people will say, well,
Speaker 2: why not add more targets, Well, only three targets. You
Speaker 2: need a certain number of shots at a target to
Speaker 2: get meaningful statistics, So eight shots. With the variability of
Speaker 2: someone who might be up to a twenty handicap, you
Speaker 2: need at least eight to start to get insights on. Okay, well,
Speaker 2: what is your average carry distance? What is your dispersion,
Speaker 2: and we relate those to a handicap, So put a
Speaker 2: lot of effort into being like, okay, this is your
Speaker 2: dispersion at this particular distance. Then this is your handicap level.
Speaker 2: So you can start say, well, I'm you know, you
Speaker 2: know what your handicap is. In the course, I'm a ten,
Speaker 2: but shoot to a six year target, I'm eighteen. Okay,
Speaker 2: I got to work on that. And and then you know,
Speaker 2: everybody wants to hit driver, so you've also got that
Speaker 2: driving target where you could pick your driver or three
Speaker 2: wood could be a hybrid, could be a driving iron
Speaker 2: for that round. And what's cool is then you can
Speaker 2: start to you know, there's the intelligence built into the
Speaker 2: combine where if you pick out your first target, you
Speaker 2: know your first combines fifty yards, one hundred yards, and
Speaker 2: your driver, well that is going to say, hey, Claude,
Speaker 2: you know what, we noticed that you hit these clubs
Speaker 2: to those targets. We're going to suggest these different targets.
Speaker 2: So we start to even out your bag. Hey, you
Speaker 2: know what, you haven't hit any six irons yet, and
Speaker 2: then we start to get information on gapping. Okay, now
Speaker 2: that you know you've done five or six combines, but
Speaker 2: now we know what your average distances with all these clubs,
Speaker 2: so we could recommend, hey, you know what looks like
Speaker 2: maybe you want to decrease the loft on your fifty
Speaker 2: four because you've got a big gap between your fifty
Speaker 2: four and your fifty eight as an example. And there's
Speaker 2: all sorts of cool insights, so it's we're maximizing performance
Speaker 2: but also getting a lot of insights in a tight
Speaker 2: little combine that the majority of people could benefit from.
Speaker 2: Tour player hitting twenty four balls in this combine is
Speaker 2: going to learn a lot so well the high handicapper. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the great things, and one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why I've partnered and do stuff with
Speaker 1: the Rapsoda as well, is so much in golf the
Speaker 1: tech has been at a price point that is, I
Speaker 1: see these sixteen year old kids that you know, show
Speaker 1: up for a golf lesson and they've got a track
Speaker 1: man all and my dad got me a track man
Speaker 1: for Christmas. I'm like, he basically just brought you a
Speaker 1: thirty thousand dollars car, right, I mean just I mean
Speaker 1: the price point for a lot of the tech has
Speaker 1: been so prohibited that only the elite of the elite.
Speaker 1: I mean. I teach a girl on the LPG, Marina
Speaker 1: Alex And Marina is one on the LPGA. She played
Speaker 1: on the Solheim Cup. And when I first started working
Speaker 1: with her, we got some launch monitor, you know. I
Speaker 1: put her on a launch monitor just to see what
Speaker 1: she was doing. I was like, do you have your
Speaker 1: own track man? She's like, I can't afford a track man, right,
Speaker 1: She's a professional athlete that was saying, listen, the price
Speaker 1: point is just too prohibitive. So I think it's great
Speaker 1: that we're starting to see some of the tech in
Speaker 1: golf that the best players in the world are using
Speaker 1: start to come down so that everyday golfers who don't
Speaker 1: have twenty thirty, fifteen thousand dollars to invest, there's ways
Speaker 1: that they can use the same technology in the same
Speaker 1: information that they see the best players in the world using.
Speaker 1: And like you said, what I really like about the
Speaker 1: combine is it's almost got some AI in it to
Speaker 1: where it's it's helping you as the player learn as
Speaker 1: you go along based off of what it's seeing you do.
Speaker 1: And like you said, if you put enough data in,
Speaker 1: it's going to start to see trends and kind of
Speaker 1: see what you're doing. And I think that is just
Speaker 1: so so important for a fifteen handicapper saying, listen, maybe
Speaker 1: you don't need to improve based maybe you don't have
Speaker 1: the time to massively improve, but if you can just
Speaker 1: have a better understanding as to what you do and
Speaker 1: do what you do all the time, right, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is how far you hit your nine iron. Rather than
Speaker 1: try to hit your nine iron further, maybe you try
Speaker 1: and make sure that you can hit your nine iron
Speaker 1: at this baseline number all the time. And that's where
Speaker 1: I think information for a lot of people listening is power,
Speaker 1: because if you can just know what you do and
Speaker 1: not try and fundamentally change what you do and say, okay, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm never going to be Rory McElroy. I'm never going
Speaker 1: to be Scotti Scheffler. I am who I am, and
Speaker 1: I'm a fifteen handicapper. Yeah I want to put better,
Speaker 1: Yeah I want to hit better. But if I can
Speaker 1: get a really good understanding is to what I do
Speaker 1: and how far I hit the golf ball. I mean,
Speaker 1: DJ was hitting balls today. He was going back and
Speaker 1: forth between trying out a different wedge, and you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think people listening realize. I mean, he can
Speaker 1: tell you within a yard of how far it went
Speaker 1: without looking at the launch monitor. He can be within
Speaker 1: one hundred RPMs of the spin it'll go. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: one was a little bit off the toe, so that's
Speaker 1: gonna go. And I think if the regular everyday golfer
Speaker 1: just knew what they did, it would help them tremendously
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't have to make as many massive changes
Speaker 1: as they think. If they could just have a better
Speaker 1: relationship with the truth of what they do.
Speaker 2: Well. Yeah, I think that it provides eye opening information
Speaker 2: to most people when you realize that your nine iron
Speaker 2: distance is not that one nine iron you flushed off
Speaker 2: the tee downwind. Yeah, where you're like, yeah, I can
Speaker 2: hit my I can't hit my nine iron one point fifty.
Speaker 2: But in the rhapsodal Combine is telling me that I'm
Speaker 2: one forty two. Right, So if I've got if I've
Speaker 2: got water to carry at one, I don't want fifty
Speaker 2: percent of my shots any in the way I've been
Speaker 2: a bullet iron, right. And it sets expectations too in
Speaker 2: terms of dispersions. So you know, people think, Okay, I've
Speaker 2: got eighty yards, I should have a birdie putt. But
Speaker 2: you look at your eighty r target on Rapsodo and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden you go, wait, my average my
Speaker 2: average proximity is twenty five feet. Well that means I've
Speaker 2: got a whole lot over twenty five feet. Yeah, I've
Speaker 2: got a few in there that are birdie putts. So
Speaker 2: I think I think it can help people enjoy the
Speaker 2: game because it maybe sets their expectations at a reasonable level.
Speaker 1: Well, listen, I think you know at the elite level,
Speaker 1: but also at the every day golfer lessel level that
Speaker 1: that the majority of the people listening to this or
Speaker 1: are are at. Just managing your expectations and having a
Speaker 1: better understanding is to what you do, you know, I
Speaker 1: think is huge. We could sit Sasho. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are so many things I didn't get to. I've got
Speaker 1: another list. So we're gonna get you back on because
Speaker 1: I mean I read all the stuff that you're doing.
Speaker 1: I've got so many questions. We will get you back
Speaker 1: on the pod, you know, at a later date to
Speaker 1: talk more about it, because I think the work you're
Speaker 1: doing is amazing and to see and and I think
Speaker 1: you've been lucky enough to see it. When when I
Speaker 1: saw Matt after he won the US Open, I said
Speaker 1: to him, it's a couple of weeks later. I think
Speaker 1: it was at the British Or. I saw him at St.
Speaker 1: Andrews last year. I said, listen, I've been around golf
Speaker 1: pretty much my whole life, and you won't find someone
Speaker 1: that works harder than that kid. If there's if there's
Speaker 1: a stone that he can turn over, he's going to
Speaker 1: turn it over to try and get better. And I
Speaker 1: think the work that you've done with him has been
Speaker 1: fun to watch. So congrats not only to him, but
Speaker 1: congrats to you as well, and for everyone listening. If
Speaker 1: you want to hit the golf ball further, or put
Speaker 1: some money in Doc's pocket and go get the Stack
Speaker 1: System because it will definitely help you. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to talk to us, and
Speaker 1: we will definitely get you back on the pod again soon.
Speaker 2: Okay, thanks Bob, my pleasure.
Speaker 1: So that was Sasha McKenzie. And listen, if you want
Speaker 1: to try and hit the golf ball further, I think
Speaker 1: he's got some data and some info that can help
Speaker 1: you do it. He's got a product that'll help you
Speaker 1: do it. So the Stack System. Some of the best
Speaker 1: players in the world they're using it, And if you
Speaker 1: want to hit the golf ball further, give it a try.
Speaker 1: I don't think you will be disappointed. So we've got
Speaker 1: a lot of great guests coming up, but we've got
Speaker 1: a lot of great guests that have been on the pod,
Speaker 1: So if you're new, go back, take a look. We've
Speaker 1: got some great interviews. Everything's designed to try and help
Speaker 1: your game get better, maybe teach some things you didn't know.
Speaker 1: But Ultimately, the whole goal of this pod is to
Speaker 1: try and have everybody enjoy their golf more so, I
Speaker 1: can't thank everybody enough for listening, rate, review, subscribe wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. Son of a Butcher comes to
Speaker 1: you every Wednesday. We will see you next week.